Master Class Supply Chain Decision Making

Target group

This masterclass is designed for organizations and professionals who want to make better decisions about demand, capacity, inventory, service levels, costs, and financial impact in a volatile market. The program is relevant for teams that want to break down silos, make better use of scenarios, and reach consensus-based decisions more quickly when priorities conflict.

Typical participants include:

• Supply Chain Managers who want to strengthen end-to-end decision-making regarding service, inventory, capacity, and costs.
• Demand and Supply Planners who want to better translate forecast insights, capacity information, and scenarios into concrete decisions.
• Operations Managers who want to better align capacity decisions, bottlenecks, and operational feasibility with commercial and financial priorities.
• Sales and Commercial Managers who want to align market demand, customer priorities, and commercial ambitions with operational capabilities and risks.
• Finance Managers and plant controllers who want to more strongly integrate financial impact, working capital, margins, and scenarios into supply chain decision-making.
• Executive board members and senior managers—such as general managers, business unit managers, and plant managers—who want to make faster and better-informed decisions regarding priorities, risks, and trade-offs.

Our approach

• The Supply Chain Decision Making Masterclass program consists of one workshop spanning two consecutive days.
• Each workshop offers a mix of theoretical foundations and practical exercises.
• Ideally, each participant should have a process improvement project to work on.
• Throughout the training program, there will be opportunities for feedback on progress and potential challenges in these projects.
• Each workshop session provides an opportunity to exchange experiences with other participants.

More about Stanwick Academy

What to expect?

In this practical masterclass, you’ll discover how demand planning, supply planning, forecasting, KPI management, governance, and scenario planning come together in a single cross-functional decision-making process. The focus is not on learning a standard planning cycle, but on strengthening management decisions: setting priorities more quickly, making trade-offs explicit, and substantiating choices with facts, scenarios, and impact analyses.

Drawing on international best practices and real-world experience from supply chain and operational excellence initiatives, you’ll learn how to design, implement, and continuously improve a robust decision-making process. You’ll gain insight into the maturity of your current approach, identify where decisions are currently being delayed or stalling, and develop a concrete action plan toward Supply Chain Excellence.

After this masterclass participants can:

• Integrate demand, capacity, inventory, service, and financial impact into a single decision-making process
• Select, interpret, and translate the right KPIs into concrete management decisions
• Design a high-performing cross-functional decision-making process
• Use scenarios to better assess uncertainty, risks, and opportunities
• Define roles, responsibilities, and escalation rules for better decision-making
• Break down silo thinking and steer discussions around facts, trade-offs, and priorities
• Conduct a maturity assessment of processes, governance, data, and collaboration
• Develop a concrete improvement plan to strengthen decision-making and supply chain performance.

Possible results for a stronger decision process:

• Better forecast accuracy
• Higher delivery reliability and OTIF
• Lower inventory and less working capital
• Fewer rush orders and operational firefighting
• Better capacity utilization
• Better alignment between sales targets and operational feasibility
• Faster and better-informed management decisions 
• Greater transparency regarding risks, scenarios, and trade-offs

Programme

The program retains the key building blocks of integrated planning (Sales & Operations Planning, Integrated Business Planning), but approaches them from a single central question: how do you make better, faster, and more widely supported supply chain decisions in uncertain circumstances?

Module 1 – From Planning to Supply Chain Decision Making

• Fundamentals of Integrated Business Decision Making
• Why organizations need more than a traditional planning cycle in the face of volatility, disruptions, and uncertainty.
• How demand, capacity, inventory, service, and financial objectives converge within a single decision-making framework.
• Common pitfalls in integrated decision-making and how to avoid them.

Module 2 – Operating model & governance

• Bringing structure to cross-functional decision making
• The building blocks of a high-performing operating model for planning, coordination, and decision-making.
• Roles, responsibilities, RACI, and escalation rules to make decisions faster.
• Designing an effective management rhythm that aligns with the organization’s maturity level.

Module 3 – Demand review & forecast excellence

• From forecast to a shared demand view
• Best practices in demand planning, forecasting, and the use of commercial market insights.
• Interpreting forecast KPIs such as Forecast Accuracy and Forecast Bias as input for decisions.
• Make demand drivers and assumptions explicit to better assess risks and opportunities.

Module 4 – Supply review & capacity planning

• Translating Demand into Operational Feasibility
• Translate capacity planning, resource planning, and bottleneck analysis into feasible choices.
• Link supply planning and inventory optimization to service levels, costs, and working capital.
• Highlight operational constraints, risks, and scenarios to inform management decisions.

Module 5 – Integrated decision making

• Prepare trade-offs and substantiate choices
• Combine demand and supply insights into clear decision points.
• Make trade-offs explicit between service, capacity, inventory, costs, margin, and working capital.
• Escalate conflicts, exceptions, and dependencies in a timely manner to the appropriate decision-making level.

Module 6 – Executive decision making

• From Operational Insights to Strategic Choices
• Translate management information into decisions regarding priorities, risks, and scenarios.
• Utilize KPI-driven decision-making to maintain focus on service, costs, and margin.
• Identify success factors for management engagement and decision-making without getting bogged down in operational details.

Module 7 – KPIs & performance management

• Measuring What Improves Decisions
• Develop a KPI framework for forecasting, service, inventory, operations, and finance.
• Interpret indicators such as OTIF, service level, inventory turns, capacity utilization, and working capital.

• Organize KPI governance so that metrics lead to actions and better decisions.

Module 8 – Scenario planning & financial integration

• Deciding Based on Impact, Risk, and Financial Consequences
• Develop scenarios for demand, capacity, inventory, service, and delivery reliability.
• Compare financial impacts on revenue, margin, costs, working capital, and inventory levels.
• Support risk-based decision-making with facts, assumptions, and impact analyses.

Module 9 – Change management & governance

• Embedding Behavior, Collaboration and Buy-In
• Engage stakeholders and reduce resistance to cross-functional change.
• Break down silo mentality through clear governance, ownership, and a disciplined approach to consultation.
• Practically apply escalation management, conflict resolution, and accountability models.

Module 10 – To world-class supply chain decision making

• From well-organized to future-oriented and data-driven
• The evolution toward Integrated Business Planning and more mature decision-making.
• Utilize AI, machine learning, advanced analytics, and planning software as decision support.
• Translate continuous improvement and international best practices into your own organization.

Module 11 – Maturity assessment & roadmap

• From maturity assessment to a targeted improvement process
• Assess maturity in terms of processes, people, governance, data, technology, and management commitment.
• Identifying strengths, pain points, and improvement priorities based on a structured assessment.
• Developing a concrete roadmap with quick wins, priorities, and long-term actions.